Tea Leaves
by Zaedah
Summary: When a ninja kills, death doesn't necessarily follow.


**Tea Leaves**

There is a quota for cuddling.

The mathematical formula that Tony employs is based on the defiantly subjective trial-and-error method. Someone, he thinks while crickets quarrel, should applaud his use of scientific analysis. But however faulty the data collection, it's one on which he heavily relies for his own version of sanity, because asking Ziva would be akin to inviting piranhas into bed. The objectives of the case study are simple; how long can he hold her after the sweating exclamations have ceased? How many minutes will she allot before his arm is forcibly relocated and his body is relegated to a measured distance from hers?

One mattress, two time zones, three minutes and counting.

This is the sole honest gauge of her state.

Of course this will be denied, usually because she wants to be considered self-sufficient but occasionally because she doesn't want to be labeled cold. Once in a great and mysterious while, Ziva will indicate by means of coagulated silence that it bothers her to not be considered a warm person. Hot she may be, but shows of fondness are reserved for ancient weapons and special ice cream. Either way, his point is argued and lost.

If she could tolerate his embrace without feeling forced (or worse, clamping down on repulsion at the perception that companionable touch equals weakness) Tony could face the coming day with less mental bruising.

Mostly he thinks he doesn't understand her, is too critical of what she's not even conscious of doing. Mostly he thinks he'll take the bad because the good is too precious to toss on technicalities. And really, perhaps he's just too damned clingy.

So invested in reading palm-line gestures and tea leaf sighs, Tony bypasses any scrutiny of his own emotional meter. As a result, he catches himself obsessing over the most insipid things. Darkened nights find him pondering how he never had to ride a bus to school. Early hours are given over to the pointed arc of that missed free throw in that fifth game of that second season.

Thoughts are rather banal when deported to his side of the bed, a continent away from her and a hemisphere from happy.

The clock watches him calculate the optimal date for the next oil change as though it's a matter of national security and he'll swear the speedy little second hand laughs in its orbit at the silly, fragile human.

She doesn't approve of his nightmares.

It's forbearance on her part when, in sacrifice to her shred of peace, she must rouse him from a dream. That's his assignment and the switching of roles always throws a dent into her brow. All the events she gives no voice to will turn up in vivid retellings in Tony's head. But he's not entitled to such imaginative renderings of her pain. At least, this is the impression that a panting, panicked three am provides.

He'd hope to be wrong.

Maybe contact comes with a sense of deserving that she lacks. These are her flaws, too much confidence based on broken shadows. Maybe she wants to be coddled but fears the repercussions. These are her memories, asking for comfort from a father ill-equipped. Maybe the hands she permits in light warp into someone else's at dusk. These are her dreams, the truth of what his supposition only shades.

Touch, he'd learned quickly, is best left to daylight and passion. The in-between only gets him into trouble. Caresses earn the couch. Waking to screams is a rarity now, some unconscious control steeling her tongue against such betrayal of emotion. But still he knows. No box spring can hold back the waves of motion when she darts awake.

He doesn't approve of her silences.

A thankless duty to sit beside a shaking woman who lets grief fall into the canyon's gulf between them. She won't speak and he can't ask. And for all that she looks like a toddler who tripped in the street, he dare not offer a nurturing hug.

He'd like to be anywhere else. He'd be nowhere else.

Sometimes the vice of his hold cannot be released on command. She'll squirm, a hint that blossoms into huffs, into elbows in his ribs. The quota has never been met. Like an hourglass winding down to the inevitable emptiness, she can endure no more closeness. Strange how she seeks fierce intimacy only to rebuff simple affection. How she spurns being cherished. Typically, he'll let go because the road to sleep is not paved in argument. But there's that stubborn boy in his limbs, the one who climbs down from a passive tree house to wreak disaster on the ground, the one who tests limits because there's still the hope of reward for persistence.

Making her fight for freedom helps neither. He'd like to represent that freedom, not repress it. It's only obstinacy that prompts him to cling, force her into compliance with his agenda. That and a craving for just one more minute. Just stay put. Just let me...

Like cradling a cactus.

And so he counts the evening's allotment, each droplet of blessing, and waits for the termination of consolation. He's become a gambler of estimates, stakes based on length of contact, proclaiming tonight the ball will settle into the roulette slot of his choosing and be satisfied to nestle there. Until the sphere leaps from its resting place, table on fire.

Tony wonders if he burns her. If his love, or whatever it is, is an unbearable scalding on her skin. Proof of life, a reminder she's not always thrilled to receive. Self-pity has been known to make him move first, rarely, to be the one who ends touch, to invite his own brand of piranhas to bed. Because she burns him too; defying his wishes, denying his needs.

When a ninja kills, death doesn't necessarily follow.

Except that she's a silly, fragile human who, at least on this night, has fallen asleep on his chest. And he cancels all inner debates on his last firing range results, relaxes the vice and tells the clock to mind its own minutes.

He's read the residue of tea leaves again. The quota has been met.

* * *

><p><strong>Written in clueless haste last night. Sometimes my muse holds a cranky whip...<strong>


End file.
